Is Bush merely in Corleone mode?

So now we’re hearing that President Bush, clearly recognizing the erosion within his Republican base, intends to recalibrate his message about Iraq, and express a stronger desire to reduce the number of U.S. troops at what he deems to be the earliest opportunity. Or something like that. His aides are hinting that, as early as today, he will begin to unveil “his vision for the post-surge,” presumably as a counterweight to all the Bush visions that have come to naught thus far.

But, amidst the latest evidence that the war has already cost the American taxpayers nearly half a trillion dollars, with nearly 3600 U.S. soldiers dead, and with more than 70 percent of the electorate now favoring the withdrawal of nearly all troops by next April, the big question is whether restive Senate Republicans – particularly the 10 members who are already distancing themselves from Bush – will buy the idea that the Decider has suddenly learned humility.

They won’t fall for that. They know he is only trying to buy time – until the Petraeus status report in September, at which point he will try to buy even more time. They can perhaps seize upon one slender reed - the latest USA Today/ Gallup poll says that a majority of Americans are still willing to wait until September - but the political momentum is clearly for a strategy change, sooner rather than later.

Bush is starting to sound like Michael Corleone in Godfather II, at least in the scene when his wife Kay announces that she’s leaving him. His response: “Kay, in time you’ll feel differently. You’ll be glad I stopped you now…I’ll make it up to you. I’m going to change. I’ll change. I’ve learned that I have the strength to change…And we’ll go on, you and I. We’ll go on.”

Moments later, he slapped her.

The Senate Republicans are tired of getting slapped around; even Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader in the chamber, said something quite remarkable the other day. McConnell, who is up for re-election in 2008, said: “The majority of the public has decided the Iraq effort is not worth it. That puts a lot of pressure on Congress to act because public opinion in a democracy is not irrelevant.” (Nice of him to say that.)

Does Bush really have the strength to change? Consider all aspects of the current spin game. On the one hand, White House sources are saying that Bush might approve a gradual troop withdrawal, and be willing to accept less ambitious goals. On the other hand, Bush said today in Ohio, "we've got a plan to lead to victory." (Remind me...have we heard that one before?) And press secretary Tony Show appeared this morning on The Today Show, and seemed not to be ceding much of anything: “We need to give our forces time to show what they have done…We are at the very beginning stages of an effort to try to create the space so the Iraqis can stand up for themselves…(We are) going to try to find even more nuanced ways of trying to measure success.”

This is what happens when a president loses his political mojo – he has to make conciliatory noises to the critics in his own party, while also somehow signaling to his most diehard loyalists that he still has the old resolve. Snow was dispatched this morning to perform the latter task. The war hawks may be out of touch with landslide majority American opinion, but they’re still a vital part of Bush’s base.

Among Snow’s intended targets was Bill Kristol, the longtime neoconservative activist who edits Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard magazine. Kristol went ballistic yesterday, in the wake of reports that Bush might cede some ground to his war critics. Kristol derided the dissident GOP senators as “the current calamity-Janes of the Republican party,” and warned that if Bush caves in to this “insane, irrational panic,” he “would properly be viewed as a feckless, irresolute president, incapable of seeing his own strategy through a couple of months of controversy before abandoning it.” All told, here’s Kristol’s sage suggestion: “The best strategy for the president is to hold firm.”

But, for Bush, here’s the problem: He’s stuck between the mainstream Republicans who are waking up to political reality (McConnell’s belated recognition that “public opinion in a democracy is not irrelevant”), and the home front warriors, such as Kristol, who have been wrong about Iraq every step of the way, and who therefore would appear to lack the credibility to offer new advice.

Kristol is the same guy who said, on April 1, 2003: “There’s been a certain amount of pop psychology in America…that the Shia can’t get along with the Sunni, and that the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There’s almost no evidence of that at all.” He’s the same guy once said: “Nor is there any doubt that after Sept. 11, Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction pose a danger to us that we hadn’t grasped before.” He once said that “reconstructing Iraq may prove to be a less difficult task than the challenge of building a viable state in Afghanistan.” And last winter, he dismissed the bipartisan Iraq Study Group’s recommendations – including its call for a reduced U.S. presence in Iraq – as “deeply irresponsible.”

Yet today, mainstream Senate Republicans such as Lamar Alexander and John Sununu are backing a bill to put the ISG’s recommendations into effect – and that’s one of the milder options now on the table. As I mentioned here last Friday, the new GOP dissidents have yet to back up their defiant words with actual antiwar votes, but clearly that prospect is growing. If Bush sincerely intends to bond anew with the GOP, and forestall further erosion, he may be well advised to stiff the tainted neoconservative prophets and cede substantive ground.

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Bill Kristol, on many other fronts, is a smart and perceptive guy. And, as I sought to demonstrate in my latest newspaper column, he was downright prescient, back in 1999, about how the conservatives intended to remake the U. S. Supreme Court, in the aftermath of a Republican presidential victory.

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By the way, the latest USA Today-Gallup poll (referenced near the top of today's post) also contains this little nugget:

When asked whether Bush was right to commute Scooter Libby's jail sentence, 13 percent said yes. Sixty-six percent said no.

No wonder most Capitol Hill Republicans have been staying far away from that one. The only Republican willing to brave the Sunday shows and defend Bush's decision was Utah congressman Chris Cannon, whose predictable response was to change the subject to Bill Clinton.

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The latest on the McCain campaign meltdown: This morning, his two top strategists quit. In terms of inside baseball, this is very big news.

Early last week, while insisting that McCain's fundraising crisis was no big deal, campaign manager Terry Nelson said he was honored to forego a paycheck and toil for McCain free of charge. Now he says it was a “tremendous honor” to serve McCain, but he won’t do it any longer. Nevertheless, “I believe John McCain is the most experienced and prepared candidate to represent the Republican Party and defeat the Democratic nominee next year."

Nelson was a relative newcomer to the McCain fold. Not so John Weaver, the chief strategist, who stuck with and suffered with McCain, amidst the smears from unnamed Bush partisans, during the 2000 primary season. But now Weaver is leaving, as well. He too says it was an “honor” to serve McCain; moreover, “There is only one person equipped to serve as our nation's chief executive and deal with the challenges we face, and that person is John McCain.”

If they still think he’s the best candidate, why are they bailing? The latest reports indicate that McCain fired Nelson, prompting Weaver to quit, and, in turn, prompting longtime McCain intimate Mark Salter (co-author of McCain's books) to quit as well.

No doubt we'll learn more about what triggered this implosion, which will surely feed the perception that the purported Straight Talk Express is out of gas. For McCain, maybe this exodus is an act of mercy, because there’s virtually no chance that an unreconstructed Iraq war hawk can win the presidency in 2008.

My Dick Cheney fantasy interview

I surfed the Sunday talk shows yesterday, but this is the one I really wanted to see:

TIM RUSSERT: Our stories this morning - President Bush keeps Scooter Libby out of jail and triggers more controversy for a beleaguered administration that is also facing major Senate Republican defections over the war in Iraq. These issues and more for our exclusive guest, the vice president of the United States. Dick Cheney, welcome back to Meet the Press. It’s good to have you here.

CHENEY: I’m not here.

RUSSERT: Excuse me?

CHENEY: Well, clearly I am ‘here,’ if by ‘here’ you are referring only to a temporal physical presence, one that is most certainly superseded by the provisions of Article VIII of the U.S. Constitution.

RUSSERT: I was not aware - forgive me, sir, but I was taught many years ago that the U.S. Constitution contains only seven articles. Are you saying -

CHENEY: Exactly right. Alexander Hamilton was a very prescient man, and he clearly foresaw the loss of life on Sept. 11 when he personally crafted Article VIII, which enumerates the inherently implicit powers of the vice president to create the fourth branch of government in time of national emergency. I would share this newly discovered document with you, but legal counsel compels me not to, although I can say with confidence today that we will be sharing it with our Iraqi friends, who continue to seek advice on how to best construct their new democracy.

RUSSERT: All right, let’s move to the topic of Iraq. Your superior, President Bush –

CHENEY (lopsided grin): My what?

RUSSERT: All right, perhaps I'm not up to speed on Article VIII. Let me rephrase. Mr. Bush last week announced that he had commuted the jail sentence of your longtime close aide, Scooter Libby, even though Mr. Libby had been convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in a national security investigation into an alleged White House effort to smear a critic of the Iraq war. Newsweek has just posted a new article about the president’s backstage deliberations. Let’s look at a key passage.

NEWSWEEK EXCERPT ON SCREEN (RUSSERT NARRATING): The president was conflicted. He hated the idea that a loyal aide would serve time. Hanging over his deliberations was Cheney, who said he was “very disappointed” with the jury’s verdict. Cheney did not directly weigh in with Fielding – that’s Fred Fielding, the White House counsel – but nobody involved had any doubt where he stood. “I’m not sure Bush had a choice," says one of his advisors. "If he didn’t act, it would have caused a fracture with the vice president.”

RUSSERT: Any comment?

CHENEY: Tim, as you know, Newsweek is affiliated with The Washington Post, and The Washington Post, as you know, has not always been a friend of those who understand the threat of our enemies at home and abroad. And it would appear, from this report, that it was sourced in part by leaks that I did not authorize –

RUSSERT: But isn’t there something disturbing about the suggestion that Bush didn’t have a “choice” in the matter? That he had to let Libby off, because if he didn’t, he would make you angry? Forgive me, sir, but who is running this country?

CHENEY: Again, Tim, I could reference Article VIII, but if you insist on seeing it, legal counsel advises me to take preventive measures, through the use of a burn bag.

RUSSERT: That won’t be necessary. But some people allege, Mr. Vice President, that the decision to free Mr. Libby sets up a double standard of justice. It is well known, for example, that when Mr. Bush was the governor of Texas, he turned down 57 requests to commute the death sentences of inmates who had received shoddy legal representation. One of those lawyers literally fell asleep during his client’s trial. Amnesty International even issued a report about the Bush years. I'm quoting now: “At every step of the process in Texas, a litany of grossly inadequate legal procedures fail to meet minimum international standards for the protections of human rights,” while also failing to adopt the minimum standards set by the American Bar Association. Mr. Vice President, is it fair to free Mr. Libby, who had the best legal representation money can buy –

CHENEY: Tim, again, Sept. 11, 2001 was a day that changed America, and I was of course disappointed that the judge and jury in Mr. Libby’s case declined to honor Mr. Libby’s contributions in taking the fight to the enemy in Iraq –

RUSSERT: Sir, are you suggesting that Saddam Hussein planned the Sept. 11 attacks…But let’s stay on point here. Why is it fair that Mr. Bush should be lenient with Mr. Libby, in direct contradiction to his tough-on-crime record in Texas – where as documents clearly indicate, he repeatedly refused to commute the death sentences of inmates who were mentally ill and mentally retarded?

CHENEY: Tim, I can say categorically that the mentally ill had absolutely no role in planning or executing our vital war in Iraq.

RUSSERT: Well, let’s talk for a moment about that war. You’re losing support these days even among Senate Republicans who don’t see any progress in Iraq. This weekend, in fact, a suicide truck bomb killed as many as 200 people, perhaps the deadliest single event since the 2003 invasion, and scores of other deaths were reported as well. Yet here is something you said, on this show, back on Sept. 14 of that year. Let’s watch.

VIDEO EXCERPT ON SCREEN (CHENEY, 9/14/03): We’re moving aggressively to deal with the security situation. We’re continuing those efforts. We’ve got some first-rate troops undertaking those efforts, and, needless to say, we’ve had major success, major progress when you think about the number of Iraqi bad guys that we’ve eliminated or captured….We’ve got Iraqis now in charge of each ministry in the government. We’ve got 90 percent—over 90 percent of the cities and towns and villages of Iraq are now governed by democratically elected or appointed local councils. We’ve got all the schools open; we’ve got all the hospitals up and functioning…

RUSSERT: Given the current bloodshed, Mr. Vice President, were you perhaps too optimistic in 2003?

CHENEY: Well, again, Tim, let’s talk about the unfortunate incident this weekend. To me it clearly demonstrates that the perpetrators are increasingly desperate, and that the Iraqi insurgency itself is in its last throes, if you will. And may I say one thing more, Tim?

RUSSERT: Absolutely, Mr. Vice President, it’s always a pleasure to have you here.

CHENEY: Yes, well, I would like to confiscate the video of this particular show –

RUSSERT: Excuse me?

CHENEY: - and request a permanent embargo on any and all transcripts of this show, as they might signal our future intentions to the enemy, under the provisions of Section 3 of the aforementioned Article VIII.

RUSSERT: Mr. Vice President, that is an extraordinary request. Perhaps I may at least be permitted to read the relevent provisions of Article VIII, before forwarding your request to NBC.

CHENEY: Well, we might be able to arrange that –

RUSSERT: Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.

CHENEY: - but then we might have to kill you.

GOP dissidents in the Cave of Winds

The U.S. Senate has long been derisively characterized as the Cave of Winds, because the august members of the upper chamber tend to talk a good game without actually doing anything. Bear this in mind while watching the parade of Republican senators who seem eager to declare their rhetorical independence from President Bush and his ruinous war.

Yesterday, Pete Domenici of New Mexico became the third GOP senator to break with Bush within the last two weeks, echoing Dick Lugar of Indiana and George Voinovich of Ohio. Domenici, who faces a tough ’08 re-election race in a newly swing state where he was once considered inviolate, voiced his desire for “a new strategy that will move our troops out of combat operations and on the path to continuing home.”

However – and here’s the rub – he also signaled that he has no intention to join the Senate Democratic majority in actually crafting a substantive antiwar bill (“I’m not calling for an immediate withdrawal or a reduction in funding”); not did he even hint at any desire to round up his fellow Republicans to vote for such a bill, and to stand firm by overriding the inevitable Bush veto.

Domenici sounded just like Lugar. Eleven days ago, the Indiana lawmaker called for a major change in Iraq strategy during a speech on the Senate floor – then proceeded to undercut his words by scoffing at the Democrats’ attempts to take action. In subsequent TV interviews, he dismissed the idea of enacting “so-called timetables” and characterized them as “very partisan.” And that’s certainly how he felt back in the spring when he and his GOP colleagues voted against Democratic efforts to enact a withdrawal timetable.

Stephen Colbert wins first prize for nailing Lugar – and, in essence, exposing the GOP dissidents as typical inhabitants of the Cave of Winds. From his show last Thursday: “According to (Lugar’s) spokesperson, this speech was ‘months in the making, weeks in the writing.’ Which means Senator Lugar already thought that the war wasn’t worth it back in April when he voted against a timetable for withdrawal…Why did he wait to make the speech? He wanted to make sure it was perfect…This, folks, is just the latest example of what I call ‘courageous waiting.’ Anyone can see a crisis and so something about it, but it takes a special breed to recognize a problem, wait until nothing can be done, and then express an opinion.”

Rather than actually confront Bush – a president who has long demonstrated that he is immune to rational persuasion – the GOP dissidents continue to believe that the prudent course of action is…rational persuasion. Hence, Domenici said yesterday that he supports the bipartisan Senate bill that would codify the 79 recommendations of the Iraq Study Group as official U.S. policy. The problem is that, although the Iraq Study Group did envision a gradual drawdown of U.S. troops by next March, it did not call for the imposition of any enforceable timelines. Which means that such a law would leave Bush plenty of wiggle room to simply stay the course.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, clearly aware that these Republicans are talking bravely but offering little else, issued a statement yesterday that essentially called upon the dissidents to either put up or shut up:

“We will not see a much-needed change of course in Iraq until Republicans like senators Domenici, Lugar, and Voinovich are willing to stand up to President Bush and his stubborn clinging to a failed policy – and, more importantly, back up their words with action. Beginning with the Defense Authorization bill next week, Republicans will have the opportunity to not just say the right things on Iraq, but vote the right way, too…”

Reid was referring to the impending Senate Democratic bid to attach binding antiwar language to a Pentagon spending bill – perhaps a requirement that troop withdrawals begin within four months, followed by a large-scale pullout next spring. He’s clearly challenging the big-talking Republicans to walk the walk, but don’t hold your breath. (Also yesterday, GOP House member John Doolittle told an audience in his conservative California district that the Iraq war is a "quagmire" and that he now wants our troops to be pulled off the front lines. But, like the Senate GOP dissidents, he says he wouldn't support a mandatory withdrawal timeline, either.)

It’s not hard to dissect the GOP dissidents’ strategy. They’re just trying to talk their way out of their political bind. With the ’08 elections looming, and with a landslide majority of Americans now opposing the war and supporting a troop drawdown, these nervous Republicans are trying to put themselves on record as skeptics; this way, when the political climate gets even worse for the GOP next year, they can cite their ’07 speeches as proof that they had already distanced themselves from the loyal Bushies. On the other hand, they don’t want to actually help the Democrats confront Bush by enacting substantive legislation, because that would tick off the loyal Bushie conservative voters. Domenici, and a number of his politically vulnerable colleagues, will need those voters in 2008.

But unless these Republicans actually back up their words with action, it’s likely that nothing will change. President Bush and Vice President Cheney (or perhaps it’s the other way around) won’t budge unless confronted by a bipartisan, veto-proof demonstration of countervailing power. Here’s one new opinion on how to get Bush’s attention:

“The president is strongly motivated to string out the war until he leaves office, in order to avoid taking responsibility for the defeat he has caused and persisted in making greater each year for more than three years. To force him to begin a withdrawal before then, (Congress should signal) a flat refusal to appropriate money to be used in Iraq for anything but withdrawal operations, with a clear deadline for completion.

“The final step should be to put that president on notice that if ignores this legislative action and tries to extort Congress into providing funds by keeping U.S. forces in peril, impeachment proceedings will proceed in the House of Representatives. Such presidential behavior surely would constitute the ‘high crime’ of squandering the lives of soldiers and Marines for his own personal interest.”

Who’s saying that, John Conyers? Michael Moore? Rosie O’Donnell? Cindy Sheehan?

No, that’s retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William Odom, who served eight years under Ronald Reagan, first as the Army's senior intelligence officer, then as director of the top-secret National Security Agency. Even he seems to think that the time for talk is long past. And unless the GOP Senate dissidents agree to act in a substantive fashion, they will merely be gusts of air in the Cave of Winds.

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Following up on yesterday's post about John McCain's campaign money woes:

You know that the erstwhile "maverick" must be in bad shape, when it turns out that he actually has less cash on hand than...Ron Paul.

The downsizing of John McCain

The strategists in charge of John McCain’s presidential campaign hosted a conference call with political journalists the other day, and this was their message: “We feel good…We obviously feel confident…We feel confident about our ability to wage this campaign…We feel confident that we’ll be able to do what is necessary to be competitive…We have great confidence in his ability…As I said earlier, we feel confident…We have confidence in our plan.”

Did they mention that they feel confident?

Translation: They’re seriously worried that McCain’s presidential bid might have the same trajectory as a tech stock during the dot-com crash. Or a Detroit automaker during the ‘80s. Or a chain-owned newspaper during the Internet era.

Bullish talk can’t hide the fact that McCain’s ‘08 quest is in deep trouble.He raised less money during the second quarter of this year ($11 million) than he did during the first quarter ($13 million), and he has less money in his coffers now ($2 million, which is a pittance) than he did three months ago ($5 million). By contrast, Rudy Giuliani currently says he has $18 million in the till. The McCain strategists insisted during the conference call that his financial performance is “a remarkable achievement” that “makes us proud,” but nobody really believes that. Campaign aides have to talk that way, because they don’t want to put any more blood in the water – especially when the sharks are already circling.

Still, it was impossible to hide the grim news: “In order for us to have the money necessary to effectively communicate John McCain’s message, you know, we need to downsize our efforts and/or downsize our operation.” So they’ve laid off as many as 50 staffers (although they won’t officially confirm that number), cut the wages of the remaining staffers. Terry Nelson, a top McCain operative who has agreed to work for free, said simply, “We confronted reality, and we dealt with it.”

The “reality,” he said, is that “we face a difficult fundraising environment.” That’s an understatement. McCain’s biggest problem – although his people would never frame it this way – is that his candidacy has lost its raison d’etre. He is too liberal for the GOP’s conservative base, and too conservative for the independents who once lauded him as a “maverick.” No wonder he’s not raising enough money.

Even the McCain strategists acknowledged the other day that his longstanding support for immigration reform – most notably, a path to citizenship for illegal aliens – has turned off conservative donors. Nelson said that McCain’s futile battle for an immigration reform bill, during May and June, “was the right decision for our country (but) it also affected the campaign’s ability to raise money.” Strategist John Weaver insisted that McCain ultimately will be “rewarded” for taking his principled stand “when the voters start tuning in,” but I am skeptical. Conservative primary voters have very long memories, especially on the immigration issue; indeed, they still haven’t forgiven McCain for voting against the Bush tax cuts six years ago.

Nor have they forgiven McCain for his campaign reform law that barred special interest groups from spending their money to influence elections (anti-abortion groups, in particular, were furious). But McCain has already been rebuked on that issue as well. The U.S. Supreme Court, led by President Bush’s conservative appointees, struck down those provisions in a June ruling.

So on what issue can McCain be expected to recoup? Weaver, the strategist, had an answer for that: “He’ll be leading the debate within our party and within the country on the situation in Iraq.”

John McCain is going to lead the national debate on the Iraq war? That would be like asking Robert Downey Jr. to lead the debate over drug use.

McCain’s deep investment in that war might help him gain some traction with conservative hawks; maybe they’ll write him a few checks. But his staunch support for Bush’s debacle is further evidence that his “maverick” creds are a fiction. Most swing-voting independents, having long soured on both the war and Bush’s stewardship, aren’t going to give McCain a dime for his “principled” defense of our Iraq misadventure. Weaver insisted during the conference call that “John McCain is the ‘change’ Republican candidate in a ‘change’ election cycle,” but, on the most crucial issue facing America, McCain is the antithesis of change.

In fact, if the desire for “change” is measured in money, McCain and his Republican rivals are at a distinct disadvantage. It speaks volumes that the top two Democrats, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, together raised far more money during the second quarter ($60 million) than the top three Republicans combined (Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and McCain - $42 million). It’s impossible for the GOP strategists to spin that one away.

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By the way, how does McCain think he can "lead" the debate on Iraq, when even Republican senators are bailing out on Bush and his enabler, McCain? Last week, it was Dick Lugar and George Voinovich. Earlier today, it was Pete Domenici. In remarks on his home turf, the New Mexico senator said this: "I have carefully studied the Iraq situation, and believe we cannot continue asking our troops to sacrifice indefinitely while the Iraqi government is not making measurable progress to move its country forward. I do not support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq or a reduction in funding for our troops. But I do support a new strategy that will move our troops out of combat operations and on the path to coming home."

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Another great moment in Bush administration flackery, from today's White House press briefing. Spokesman Scott Stanzel was at the podium.

Q: "Scott, is Scooter Libby getting more than equal justice under the law? Is he getting special treatment?"

A: "Well, I guess I don't know what you mean by 'equal justice under the law.'"

To quote Madonna, "Holiday! Celebrate!"

What are you doing here? Don't you know it's a holiday? Take a break. Go have some fun. I certainly am. Check back tomorrow.

Scooter Libby's independence day

A show of hands: How many of you are surprised that President Bush has put his thumb on the scales of justice and decreed that a convicted perjurer in a national security case, a felon who was enmeshed in a White House campaign of deception to discredit a critic of the Iraq war, is somehow less deserving of jail time than Paris Hilton?

No, it’s hardly a surprise that the same guy who once promised to “restore honesty and integrity to the White House,” the same president who had previously denied more than 4000 commutation requests, has now opted to grant Scooter Libby his very own Independence Day. And it seems only perversely fitting that Bush canceled Libby’s 30-month prison sentence on the fourth anniversary of his mocking invitation to the insurgents in Iraq (“Bring ‘em on!”). Under the ethos of this administration, those in the inner circle who blunder or break the law in the service of ruinous policy shall be deemed exempt from the rules of accountability that apply to the rest of us.

Never mind the fact that Bush played fast and loose with the Department of Justice guidelines, which state that “requests for commutation generally are not accepted unless and until a person has begun serving that sentence.” (Libby, free on appeal, hadn’t yet served a day.) Or the fact that Bush, by decreeing the sentence “excessive,” slapped down a federal judge whom he himself had appointed to the bench. (The tough-on-crime judge, Reggie Walton, apparently had made the mistake of insisting that high government officials had a “special obligation” to obey the law.) Or the fact that, just 12 days ago, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that makes it tougher for convicted felons to reduce their jail time (the high court upheld the 33-month sentence of Victor Rita, who had been convicted of making false statements in a weapons investigation; Rita, like Libby, had been punished in accordance with federal sentencing guidelines).

None of those little details matter a whit to those Republicans who are cheering Bush this morning (the same Republicans who, during the Bill Clinton era, routinely invoked the primacy of “the rule of law”).

And Bush badly needed to hear those cheers. The decision to free Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff was a political act, designed to shore up support among his sole remaining constituency. His presidency has devolved to the point where only 27 percent of Americans praise his work – that’s Dick Nixon/Jimmy Carter territory – and his national share would be even lower, if not for the fact that roughly two of every three Republicans are still on board. He could ill afford to tick them off any further.

Grassroots conservatives have been especially angry at Bush lately, because of the immigration reform flap. In their view (amplified daily on talk radio), Bush’s support for the path-to-citizenship bill was proof that he is soft on illegal aliens, soft on border security, and therefore soft on national security. His only path to political redemption was to show the base that he could stand up and be a man. Which meant showing loyalty to Scooter Libby. In their view, Libby hadn’t really done anything wrong, such as lying under oath about sex.

So Bush had to show loyalty to the few (shaky) supporters he still has. And, of course, he had to show continued loyalty to his constituency of one, Libby’s ex-boss, the sole occupant of the mythical fourth branch of government. The Associated Press, reporting last night on the decision to commute Libby’s sentence, deadpanned: “White House officials…would not say what advice Cheney had given to the president.”

Cheney’s public standing is equally abysmal, but Bush is long past caring what most Americans think. His support among swing-voting independents is now at 18 percent, and there’s nothing he can do to win them back. So, in a sense, it’s probably liberating to be a maligned lame duck. Perhaps the best way to assess his Libby decision is to invoke the lyrics of Kris Kristofferson:

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

It's bad politics to insult Cuban-Americans

Fred Thompson, the GOP’s purported dream candidate, might be well advised to brush up on his rhetorical skills prior to his official launch. Clearly he’s still a bit rusty on the stump, after all those years of Hollywood make-believe.

The other night, while speaking in South Carolina about the importance of tougher border security in the age of terrorism, Thompson warned that those Cubans who habitually escape their island with a yearning to breathe free might really be coming here to blow us all up. Thompson said that, in 2005, we “rounded up over a thousand folks who originally came from Cuba. If they’re coming Cuba, where else are they coming from? I don’t imagine they’re coming to bring greetings from Castro. We’re living in the era of the suitcase bomb.”

Unless you closely follow Republican presidential politics – and, more specifically, Florida politics – those remarks probably seem unremarkable. But, politically speaking, they are downright stupid. In fact, it’s the kind of stupidity that can seriously damage a Republican hopeful, particularly a semi-candidate whose impressive poll standing, at least at this point, is basically smoke and mirrors.

Thompson appeared to be saying that the Cubans who embark for America are not coming here to enjoy the fruits of freedom; rather, they are potential terrorists because, after all, “we’re living in the era of the suitcase bomb.” Perhaps he could have justified that remark by also providing some proof that some of those “thousand folks,” or Cuban emigrants captured in other years, did in fact turn out to be terrorists. But he didn’t, thus leaving the impression that Cubans in general are seeking entry to do us harm, not to pursue the American dream.

I doubt that is what Thompson meant to imply; indeed, he later wrote on his blog that he wanted to “clarify something” about his South Carolina remarks. He then insisted that he meant to say that Fidel Castro might be sending Cuban agents through Mexico, disguised as Cuban emigrants, and that he didn’t intend to cast suspicion upon “the vast majority who immigrate legally.”

Oh. Well, then perhaps he should have explained all that in his speech. Because, as conservative commentator Jim Geraghty points out, Thompson seemed to be maligning all the anti-communist Cubans who seek to reach these shores…and, for a Republican, that is very bad politics.

In Geraghty’s words, “Aw, man. Of all the groups Fred Thompson could cite as a potential security threat, did he have to pick the Cubans? The one group of Hispanics that leans Republican?”

There’s the rub. At a time when the GOP, thanks in part to the conservatives' harsh tone in the immigration reform debate, is losing support among the fastest growing demographic group in the electorate – a new Gallup poll shows that Hispanics nationwide are leaning Democratic by nearly 3-1 – Thompson has managed to (inadvertently) insult the only Hispanic constituency that has stayed loyal to the GOP - most notably, in the pivotal state of Florida.

To gauge the political importance of the Cuban-Americans in Florida, consider this: if it wasn’t for them, George W. Bush would have spent the last six years in private life, probably trying to fulfill his old dream of becoming baseball commissioner. As you know, Bush officially won Florida in 2000 by 537 votes. He would never have managed that feat if Cuban Floridians, roughly half a million strong, hadn’t favored him over Al Gore by a margin of 81 to 17 percent.

Fairly or not, Thompson’s poorly-worded remarks have already been immortalized on YouTube, and Democratic operatives are reportedly circulating the video. Hillary Clinton, who happened to be in Miami for a Saturday speech to an Hispanic group, promptly waxed indignant, as opposing politicians are wont to do: “"I was appalled when one of the people running for or about to run for the Republican nomination talked about Cuban refugees as potential terrorists.” (Actually, it was her husband’s administration that sent a six-year-old boy back to Cuba, thereby insulting the Cuban-American electorate, which is precisely why Thompson should never have given her the opening.)

You can also bet that if Thompson wins the nomination, his remarks will be dredged up in the autumn of ’08, as Democrats seek to capture the crucial Sunshine State. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves; Thompson must first contest the other Republicans, some of whom might well be tempted to circulate his remarks when they compete for Cuban-American votes in the Florida GOP primary next January.

So perhaps the moral of this tale is, if you’re going to be touted by your fans as a Reaganesque communicator, it would be wise to shake off the cobwebs and live up to the hype.

Not even Fox can skew the mood

It must be frustrating these days to work for the Bush administration TV network – known officially as Fox News – given the president’s lame-duck status and the grim prospects for a Republican victory in 2008. Even the pollster at Fox News seems incapable of divining a silver lining for the beleaguered GOP. The latest survey, released yesterday, reports that only 31 percent of Americans praise Bush’s job performance (the lowest ever recorded by Fox News); reports that only 46 percent of self-identified conservatives praise his performance (another Fox News nadir); and reports that only 42 percent of “born-again Christians” praise his performance (another Fox News nadir).

This time, not even Fox News' loaded questions provided any sustenance. We'll get to that in a moment. But first, some back story:

In the past, the Fox pollster has occasionally managed to word the inquiries in a way that produced the desired responses, thereby providing some aid and comfort to their favored political party, and making it appear that Bush’s prospects weren’t as dire as commonly perceived.

Back in April, for example, Fox worded a question this way: “Do you think that a congressional investigation into the dismissal of the eight federal prosecutors is a good use of taxpayer money?” And, naturally, since the issue was being framed as merely a pocketbook issue for tax-averse Americans, 51 percent said no, the probe was not a good use of their money. (If that’s the only yardstick for public policy, it would have been fascinating to find out what Fox would have discovered if its pollster had also asked, “Do you think that a congressional investigation of the administration’s conduct of the Iraq war is a good use of taxpayer money?” But that question wasn't asked.)

Another April question was little more than a veiled GOP talking point: “After the 2004 presidential election, the president of the left-wing Moveon.org political action committee made the following comment about the Democratic party, ‘In the last year, grassroots contributors like us gave more than $300 million to the Kerry campaign and the DNC, and proved that the party doesn’t need corporate cash to be competitive. Now it’s our party: we bought it, we own it, and we’re going to take it back.’ Do you think the Democratic party should allow a grassroots organization like Moveon.org to take it over, or should it resist this type of takeover?” And, with the inquiry framed that way, naturally 61 percent of Americans said the party should resist such a “takeover.” (The GOP would love to plant the erroneous perception that the congressional Democrats take their orders from Moveon.org. The Fox News pollster was happy to lend a hand.)

But lately, some loaded questions have also backfired. Two months ago, Fox asked Americans, “Is it accurate to compare withdrawal from Iraq to surrender?” The introduction of the visceral S-word - much favored by the war's supporters - failed to skew the response. Sixty-one percent of Americans said no, it was not accurate to compare withdrawal to surrender.

So, in the survey released yesterday, the Fox pollster tried again, by radically upping the ante: “If there is an all-out war between the United States and various radical Muslim groups worldwide, who would you rather have in charge – Democrats or Republicans?”

Whoa, an all-out war worldwide…America under siege from an Islamo-fascist conspiracy…a veritable Armageddon that’s too much for even Jack Bauer to handle. Surely only the GOP can save the day, right? The same party that has traditionally trumped the Democrats on national security issues by 25 or 30 points, right?

Wrong. Even with Fox’s Def Con Five framing, 41 percent of Americans said they’d prefer to have the Democrats in charge. Only 38 percent picked the Republicans.

So what can the Fox pollster do next? Surely there must be a question that can produce the desired result. Maybe something like this:

If terrorists were to break into your suburban McMansion and blow up your high-definition TV during the fourth quarter of a cliffhanger Super Bowl, while Bill Clinton was off somewhere having extramarital relations, and Harry Reid was standing in your driveway laughing while Michael Dukakis drove a military tank over your rosebushes, would you deem it a good use of taxpayer money to allow moveon.org to dictate a Democrat surrender of your country?

Why John and Elizabeth zapped the pundette

It may be sheer happenstance, but over the past five days the John and Elizabeth Edwards tag team has been far more conspicuous than usual.

OK, forget the happenstance. These spouses know exactly what they’re doing, and why. They're running a campaign that needs a boost, especially on the financial side.

Elizabeth, wife of the number-three Democratic presidential candidate, made news on Sunday when she publicly declared in San Francisco that she – unlike her husband – has no problem with the concept of gay married people; “I don’t know why someone else’s marriage has anything to do with me. I’m completely comfortable with gay marriage.” A day later, John and Elizabeth trekked to NBC and sat on Jay Leno’s couch, where John defended his wife: “There’s this strange thing about Elizabeth – she actually says what she thinks. And whatever it is, is whatever it is.” (Maybe she just blurted out her stance on gay marriage in a moment of spontaneous candor; on the other hand, it conveniently signaled liberal gay donors that a gay marriage supporter had the candidate’s ear.)

Then, on Tuesday, Elizabeth decided to return the favor by defending her husband. Dialing into Chris Matthews’ show on MSNBC, she picked a fight with Ann Coulter, the poisonous pundette, who was on the set, decked out in her requisite cocktail-party finery. Elizabeth proceeded to scold Coulter (or tried to, anyway) for the latter’s track record of insults – calling John a “faggot,” for instance, and joking about the couple’s deceased teenage son.

So that was Tuesday. On Wednesday, John returned the favor, appearing on Chris Matthew’s show, and defending his wife for defending him: “I applaud Elizabeth. When people like Ann Coulter…engage in this kind of hate-mongering, you have to stand up to it.” He reiterated the point in a talk with ABC, saying that he was “very proud” of Elizabeth.

So that was Wednesday. Earlier today, Elizabeth resurfaced on NBC and defended her husband all over again, by condemning Coulter for her “name-calling about John…John’s political campaign has been based on real ideas and substance.” Also today, the Des Moines Register (the home newspaper Iowa caucus participants) ran a story about Elizabeth, who had chatted by phone with the paper on Wednesday; she told the reporter, “At some point, somebody has to stand up and say, ‘That’s enough’” – thereby hitting the same talking point that John had invoked on MSNBC Wednesday, when he had defended her for defending him.

I have no doubt that the Edwards spouses feel strongly about Coulter, a master publicist for the politics of insult. But, in a sense, they need her right now; politically, she serves two useful purposes. By assailing her as a dangerous enemy, the Edwards campaign can potentially raise a lot of money from incensed liberal voters – and what better time to contribute than right now, with the ’07 second-quarter fundraising deadline just two days away, and with all reports indicating that Edwards will raise a pittance, at least when compared to the expected hauls for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama? (Politically speaking, their targeting of Coulter is roughly akin to the GOP fundraising practice of scaring its base with dark invocations of Ted Kennedy, Michael Moore, or the Clintons.)

Indeed, by staying in the news cycle for days on end with their Coulter condemnations, the Edwards tag team has managed to shift public attention away from the two Democratic frontrunners as the second-quarter money clock winds down. The hope, apparently, is that this publicity blitz can enable the Edwards campaign to at least narrow that fundraising gap. And the campaign sees no downside in keeping Elizabeth front and center; she is a crossover figure who attracts liberals and feminists (in part because she’s an independent-minded career attorney), as well as traditional women who like the fact that she talks freely about her health and personal tragedies.

Timing is everything in politics, and Elizabeth appeared to be playing innocent this morning when she was asked on NBC whether it was sheer happenstance that her targeting of Coulter had occurred at such a crucial moment in the fundraising calendar. She replied, “I had no idea when she was going to…get back on the air again…It just happened to be at the end of the quarter.” She omitted the fact that, after Coulter called her husband a “faggot” last winter, the Edwards camp posted the slur in a video that helped raise $300,000 – all of which just happened to be timed for the end of the first fundraising quarter.

John Edwards was less coy about the whole Coulter deal. When Matthews asked him late yesterday whether it was right to both “attack her and exploit her, he basically replied, Heck, yeah: “If we ask Americans…to join us in standing up and being strong, there’s nothing wrong with that…We are raising money. I don’t know the numbers. I hope they go up.”

And by talking so much about how he and Elizabeth are determined to fight back against the “hate-mongers,” he was also trying to remind liberal donors and primary voters that the Clintons aren’t the only pugilistic marriage partners in the Democratic race. It’s unclear, however, whether he can ultimately convince those voters that the Edwards tag team is Bill and Hillary without the baggage. The odds remain strong that, by next February, John and Elizabeth will be lauding each other in defeat…while Ann Coulter, forever impervious to assault, is tossing her tresses.

A bellwether Republican defects on Iraq

The Bush administration has lost Dick Lugar, and that’s akin to a seismic crack appearing in the wall of a dam.

Given the extent of the debacle in Iraq, and the impending ’08 election calendar, it was probably inevitable that a respected Republican senator with strong foreign policy credentials would publicly renounce the Bush war strategy and thus provide political cover for timorous GOP colleagues who have long yearned to do the same. All year long the White House has tried to forestall such an event, by perpetually pleading for more patience, but the clock ran out on Monday night.

Dick Lugar – the senior senator from red-state Indiana, a Bush loyalist on every key Iraq vote dating back to 2002, winner of landslides in all his Senate elections (especially in 2006, when he didn’t even draw a Democratic opponent), a long-acknowledged dean of the GOP foreign policy establishment, a former Foreign Relations Committee chairman, a guy who routinely draws near-zero ratings from liberal groups, a ’96 presidential candidate who warned about nuclear terrorism even though nobody listened – stood on the Senate floor and issued his declaration of independence from the Bush war team.

In short, he called for a reduction in U.S. troops. Others are bound to follow – GOP senator George Voinovich of Ohio joined Lugar in dissent yesterday, calling for "gradual military disengagement," and senator John Warner of Virginia said of Lugar, “I hail what he did” – in the clearest indication thus far that Republicans will refrain from joining hands with Bush and jumping off the cliff.

Apparently, there is an ebbing desire among Senate Republicans to buttress a president whose approval rating is now on the south side of 30 percent; as Warner reportedly said yesterday, “”you’ll be hearing a number of (Iraq) statements from other colleagues,” after the Fourth of July recess. They well recognize that Gen. David Petraeus is already trying to pre-spin his September report on the Surge by dampening any expectations of success; Lugar, by delivering his speech on Monday night, has signaled that the senators are not content to simply wait around until Petraeus shows up to plead for more patience.

If a Democrat had given the Lugar speech, Bush’s surrogates would have assailed the speaker as a defeatocrat who was obviously “rooting for failure.” But Lugar’s credentials have inoculated him from rhetorical attack; indeed, GOP senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama said yesterday that when Lugar speaks out on foreign policy, “everybody tends to listen.”

Some Lugar highlights: “In my judgment, the current surge strategy is not an effective means of protecting (America’s national security) interests. Its prospects for success are too dependent on the actions of others who do not share our agenda. It relies on military power to achieve goals that it cannot achieve. It distances allies that we will need for any regional diplomatic effort. Its failure, without a careful transition to a back-up policy would intensify our loss of credibility. It uses tremendous amounts of resources that cannot be employed in other ways to secure our objectives. And it lacks domestic support that is necessary to sustain a policy of this type.”

Therefore, he said, “our security interests call for a downsizing and re-deployment of U.S. military forces…I believe that we do have viable options that could strengthen our position in the Middle East, and reduce the prospect of terrorism, regional war, and other calamities. But seizing these opportunities will require the president to downsize the U.S. military’s role in Iraq and place much more emphasis on diplomatic and economic options.”

Perhaps most tellingly, in a message to his normally supine Republican colleagues, this erstwhile Bush loyalist said: “We don’t owe the president our unquestioning agreement.”

With elections looming, elected Republicans can’t afford to march to Bush’s tune anymore. The latest CNN-Opinion Research poll, released yesterday, reports that 38 percent of grassroots Republicans now oppose the war – and that 42 percent now support the withdrawal of at least some U.S. troops from Iraq. Given this growing level of disaffection even within the GOP base, many senators and congressmen seeking re-election in 2008 are therefore well advised to create some distance (at least rhetorically, if not on actual war votes) from the lame-duck war commander. And any Republican who represents a swing state or swing district is doubly advised, given the sentiment of independent voters. The CNN poll reports that 63 percent of all Americans now support partial or full withdrawal.

Lugar, in his speech, specifically addressed the domestic political climate, arguing that Bush’s war strategy has already damaged his party: “Many political observers contend that voter dissatisfaction in 2006 with Administration policies in Iraq was the major factor in producing new Democratic Party majorities in both Houses of Congress.” He was clearly implying that further horrors await the GOP unless Bush changes course with all deliberate speed: “The president and his team must come to grips with the shortened political timeline in this country for military operations in Iraq. Some will argue that political timelines should always be subordinated to military necessity, but that is unrealistic in a democracy.”

If a Republican with tough ‘08 re-election prospects had made this argument, he might have been easily dismissed (at least by White House loyalists) as a nervous Nellie who was merely interested in saving his political skin. That's what happened several months ago, when Sen. Gordon Smith of blue-state Oregon, an imperiled '08 candidate, broke with Bush on Iraq. But Lugar’s credibility on this point is buttressed by the fact that his own political future is secure. A break with Bush is more significant when it’s staged by a red-state senator who has just won re-election with 87 percent of the vote.

This new GOP restiveness doesn’t necessarily translate into substantive Democratic victories, at least in the short term. For instance, Lugar didn’t declare that he would defect to the Democrats and vote this summer for a withdrawal timeline or anything else. But his willingness to speak out is further evidence of Bush’s growing isolation, and a fresh signal that Republicans are deeply concerned about the national mood and their ’08 prospects.

Looking ahead, perhaps the real question is, which ’08 GOP presidential candidate will read the tea leaves and adopt the Dick Lugar template?

Cheney stiffs the Founding Fathers

Well, it appears that all the political science textbooks got it wrong. It appears that the U.S. Constitution got it wrong. It appears that even the Founding Fathers got it wrong. For several centuries now, we’ve all assumed that the vice-president has been part of the executive branch of government – but now Dick Cheney has set us all straight:

From his secret undisclosed location, he has decreed that, in fact, the vice-president is not part of the executive branch of government. It is tempting to contend that Cheney must be in the last throes of sanity, considering the fact that his primary workplace is located in the Executive Office Building, but maybe he is right and everybody else is wrong, which means that there needs to be a massive attitude adjustment in this country. Maybe he really does have the right to defy the rule of law and operate as he sees fit.

Maybe, for instance, he really does have the right to tell the National Archives to take a hike; after all, the bureaucrats over there seem to think that Cheney is covered by Executive Order 12958, which compels the vice-president to tell the National Archives how his office handles and safeguards classified information. It’s true that the executive order covers any “entity within the executive branch that comes into possession of classified information,” but the hitch, apparently, is that this is a mere executive order. And Dick Cheney says he doesn’t have to comply – in fact, he hasn’t complied for the past four years – because he says his office is not “an entity within the executive branch.”

And if he says he’s right, who’s going to persuade him that he’s wrong? Certainly not his subordinates in the White House. Yesterday, deputy White House secretary Dana Perino took some buckshot in the face as she sought to teach the Cheney civics class. At one point, a reporter asked, “Does the president believe that (Cheney) is part of the executive branch?” And Perino replied, “I think that’s an interesting constitutional question, and I think that lots of people can debate it.” (Actually, the question itself was settled when the Constitution was ratified in 1787, but we’ll get back to that later.)

Reporters tried to reword the inquiry: “What is the White House’s view of the argument the vice president is making on whether or not he’s part of the executive branch?” And she replied, “I’m not opining on it.”

Then they tried another approach. They pointed out – this was a good one – that, back in 2001, when Cheney was fighting attempts by Congress to determine who had attended his secret meetings on energy policy, his whole argument was that he didn’t have to comply…because he was a member of the executive branch. In fact, let’s resurrect Cheney’s actual words at the time: he said that a congressional investigation into his energy task force “would unconstitutionally interfere with the functioning of the executive branch.”

Perino was asked how she could square the two Cheney positions. Why should he not be considered a member of the executive branch in 2007 (when that argument apparently suits his interests), after having considered himself a member of the executive branch in 2001 (when that argument apparently suited his interests)?

Perino: “Look, I’m not a legal scholar…I’m not opining on his argument that his office is making.”

So they tried another approach: If Cheney doesn’t deem himself to be a member of the executive branch, “does the White House then believe he should get funding for the vice-president’s office from the legislative branch instead of from the executive branch?” (This was a clever question, since Congress is currently pondering the executive branch budget. President Bush reportedly wants $4.75 million of that budget to be earmarked for Cheney's office.)

Penino's response: “I don’t know.”

Later, the reporters tried again: “You can't give an opinion about whether the Vice President is part of the executive branch or not?”

Penino: “I think it’s a little bit more complicated than that.”

OK, we get it. Cheney is his own fourth branch of government, and Bush won't contest what Cheney decrees. This being the case, there isn’t a moment to lose: all the civics textbooks need to be thrown into the recycling bins. But we can’t stop there. We will need to rewrite the U.S. Constitition, to bring it into compliance with Cheneyspeak.

For instance, Article II, Section I (which deals exclusively with the executive branch) currently states that “the executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the vice-president chosen for the same Term, be elected…” But perhaps that language, and all references to the veep as a member of the executive branch, can simply be excised.

Perhaps the Federalist Papers can be rewritten as well, before any high school kids get the wrong idea. Alexander Hamilton is just a dead white guy, what does he know? Back on March 3, 1788, in Paper No. 68, the Founding Fathers’ chief expert on executive power wrote that “the vice president may occasionally become a substitute for the president, in the supreme executive magistracy.” Hamilton rejected an idea, popular at the time, that the Senate should elect one of its own people to serve as vice president; he persuaded his colleagues that the number-two member of the executive branch shall “be chosen in the same manner with the president,” via national election.

But Hamilton is in no position to argue with Cheney, so let’s move on. The next task would be for the U.S. government to rewrite its own websites. This government site states: “The executive branch of the government is responsible for enforcing the laws of the land. The president, vice president, department heads (cabinet members), and heads of independent agencies carry out this mission,” but obviously whoever wrote that is clearly in error.

And these errors are apparently endemic. Take, for instance, the official White House website: “…the Cabinet includes the vice president and the heads of the 15 executive departments.” Not only that, the vice president even gets his own web page. What were they thinking?

Unless the Republicans can find a way to oust Cheney from his job, we had better get with the program and cleanse those websites, as well as rewrite American history. The Vice has decreed that it's time to flush all these inconvenient facts down the memory hole. Where’s George Orwell when we need him?

Ole Fred and the artifice of star power

In the wake of my Sunday newspaper column on the mediagenic assets of lawyer-actor-lobbyist-senator-actor Fred Thompson (that’s the career chronology of the GOP’s savior in the wings), I’m going to linger a bit longer on the words and wisdom of Arthur Miller.

In his book On Politics and the Art of Acting, the late playwright noted that successful politicians in our media-soaked culture tend to be masters of performance art. They know how to project “a relaxed sincerity…a laid-back cool…a self-assurance…a genial temperament,” all of which is meant to create the impression that hanging out with them is akin to taking ‘a quiet Sunday row around the lake.” And I argued yesterday that Thompson (or, as he has called himself, "Ole Fred") has the potential to project in this fashion, given the fact that he has honed his laid-back avuncular image on Law & Order and in dozens of movies over the past several decades.

Miller also contended that the most successful politicians – he cited Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton – are those who are somehow capable of mesmerizing the public via their celebrity star power, to the point where they get a pass on their presidential shortcomings. In print yesterday, I didn’t have room to explore this argument, so here goes:

Miller cited Reagan as the exemplar of the “relaxed sincerity” model: “He disarmed his opponents by never showing the slightest sign of inner conflict about the truth of what he was saying. Simple-minded as his critics found his ideas and remarks, cynical and manipulative as he may have been in actuality, he seemed to believe every word he said. He could tell you that atmospheric pollution came from trees, or that ketchup was a vegetable in school lunches, or leave the impression that he had seen action in World War II, rather than in a movie he had made or perhaps seen, and if you didn’t believe these things you were still kind of amused by how sincerely he said them. Sincerity implies honesty…He not only acted all the time, but did so sincerely.”

But Miller confessed that his wariness of star power was bipartisan. Six decades after the death of FDR, he recognized – at least in his most rational moments – that Roosevelt had failed as president on a key moral issue of his era: aiding the Jews of Europe. Miller wrote that, for instance, Roosevelt had “turned his back (on) the pleas of a shipload of Jewish refugees, men, women, and children who had arrived from Germany on the St. Louis, and were denied entry into America and had to return to Nazi Germany and their fate…he was seen as having chosen not to confront American anti-Semitism…There were some very good reasons to reevaluate one’s belief in Roosevelt. There were days when it seemed he had fooled a lot of people who had trusted him.”

And yet, Miller remains mesmerized: “To this day I can’t see a photo of him without feeling something like pride and a certain happiness which I seem to take in his style. It is emphatically not that I have carefully compared his positive and negative points, but something far less rational that keeps him a noble figure for me…(N)o verdict based on reason out to utterly blot out his bad deeds as I usually find myself doing. The truth, I think, is that he had the impact of a star before whom resistance melts away, a phenomenon quote beyond the normal procedures of moral accounting.”

Miller argues that Bill Clinton was able to navigate the Lewinsky scandal, and survive impeachment, in part because his own star power trumped the public’s temptation to utterly condemn him: “His love of acting may be his most authentic emotion, the realest thing about him…His closest American equivalent is Brer Rabbit, who ravishes people’s vegetable gardens, and, just when he seems to be cornered, charmingly distracts his pursuer with some outrageously engaging story, long enough to let him edge closer and closer to a hole down which he escapes…The actor lies; but with all the spontaneity that careful calculation can lend him.”

Fred Thompson, in other words, can potentially use his laid-back celebrity style, and the free advertising he receives from every Law & Order rerun, to override public doubts about his substance and his thin senatorial record. (On the blog recently, I charted some of the doubts.) Miller probably would have winced at the possibility that Thompson might succeed:

In politics and in mass culture, he wrote, “when one is surrounded by such a roiling mass of consciously contrived performances, it gets harder and harder for a lot of people to locate reality anymore. Admittedly, we live in an age of entertainment, but is it a good thing that our political life, for one, be so profoundly governed by the modes of theatre, from tragedy to vaudeville to farce? I find myself speculating whether the relentless diet of crafted, acted emotions and canned ideas is not subtly pressing our brains not only to mistake fantasy for what is real, but also to absorb this process into our personal sensory mechanism.”

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By the way, if you link to the aforementioned Sunday column, you might spy a factual error. The column stated that Thompson "attacked" John McCain's campaign finance reform law. The truth is the opposite; Thompson backed the law. The error occurred because my original draft had a typo in it - I wrote that Thompson had "acked" the McCain law. The editors thought I meant to say "attacked," whereas I meant to say "backed." Apologies. My bad.

While Petraeus was "waxing lyrical"....

I began this week by questioning whether Gen. David Petraeus can be entrusted to give us straight talk about the Surge, given his track record of toeing the Bush administration line on Iraq. In particular, I mentioned how he had sought to reassure Americans – on the eve of the ’04 election – that the U.S. program to equip the Iraqi army, and train Iraqis to defend themselves, was going just swimmingly. (I neglected to mention, by the way, that Petraeus was the supervisory officer of that program.)

I then received a number of emails from people who deemed it inappropriate to question the credibility of a man in uniform; they argued that a soldier of his stature was the perfect choice to tell us this autumn whether the Surge is working. Their actual language was unfit for a family blog, but you get the idea. Perhaps if I offered a fuller picture of Petraeus' training program, they might think differently.

It’s clear that the “progress” he touted back in 2004, with respect to the Iraqi training program, didn’t amount to a hill of beans. If the Iraqi troops had been effectively trained and equipped, chances are that the Bush war team wouldn’t have needed to launch its Surge. In other words (to borrow Bush’s terminology), if the Iraqi troops had indeed been able to stand up, we would be standing down – as opposed to ratcheting up.

So the big question is: What happened? Why did the Iraqi training program, supervised by Petraeus and touted in the press by Petreaus, turn out to be a flop?

The answers are available, to any American with an interest in factual reality. Pick up a copy of The Occupation of Iraq, authored by Ali Allawi, an Iraqi scholar and government insider. He lays out the details midway through his 544-page book:

In April 2004, Allawi writes, the U.S. decided to launch a program to train and expand the Iraqi army. The Iraqi Ministry of Defense was designated as the agency that would run the show, line up the weapons contractors, and disburse the money (primarily American money, naturally). Gen. Petraeus was brought in to supervise.

But here’s what was happening while Petraeus was (in Allawi’s words) “waxing lyrical” about the training program in the American press: The money earmarked for weapons procurement was disappearing. Or, as Allawi puts it, “the Ministry of Defense was being systematically looted.”

As a 2005 Iraqi investigation later discovered, the top Ministry of Defense officials – none of whom had any experience in procurement – awarded no-bid contracts to con men who never intended to provide quality equipment. Allawi writes that “in a series of astounding and brazen decisions that broke every contracting and procurement rule, the ministry started to award huge contracts without any bidding and with minimal documentation.”

For instance, Ziad Qattan, the head of the ministry’s procurement department, knew nothing about his new line of work. He later told the Los Angeles Times that weapons that before the war, “I sold water, flowers, shoes, cars – but not weapons.” At one point, he awarded $1 billion in contracts to a newly-formed company that had no background in the army equipment business.

Most of the American money for the program, as much as $2.3 billion, wound up in the foreign bank accounts of “unknown people,” writes Allawi. And, not surprisingly, the equipment supplied to Petraeus’ training program “was of poor quality, (worth) a fraction of the money that was paid out by the Ministry of Defense.”

Allawi writes about the helicopters, for instance. They were 30 years old, originally owned and operated by a nation that has ceased to exist, the Soviet Union. All told, “the litany of disastrous and outrageously overpriced equipment covered the entire spectrum of armaments, from machine guns that were copies of the ones actually contracted for, to armored vehicles that were so poorly armored that machine-gun bullets would easily pierce them.” Moreover, “the Iraqi army was saddled with vehicles equipped with right-hand drive steering,” which was a problem, because “Iraqis drove with left-hand steering.” Most of the culprits ultimately fled the country.

You might wonder, “Where was Petraeus while all this was happening?”

Allawi replies that Petraeus basically let it happen: “Petraeus was a firm believer in giving the new Iraqi government as wide a latitude as possible to make its own decisions, without intrusive involvement” from the Americans.

In the end, he writes, “the saga of the grand theft of the Ministry of Defense perfectly illustrated the huge gap between the harsh realities on the ground, and the Panglossian spin that permeated official pronouncements of the government, the U.S. embassy, and the Multinational Force. The optimistic assessments of Gen. Petreaus concerning the equipping and training of Iraqi forces clashed with the huge squandering of the MD’s resources and the abysmal and inappropriate equipment purchases for its rapid deployment forces….(Americans) simply watched, while the MD was being plundered in front of their very noses, hiding behind the excuse that the Iraqis were now responsible for their decisions.”

The obvious next step, for those who would prefer to deny this history, is to find a way to discredit the messenger, perhaps to impugn Allawi’s politics or to dismiss him as a terrorist, America-hater, whatever. But this is not easily done. Allawi spent his adult life in exile, as an opponent of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party regime. He returned only in 2003, after the U.S. toppled Saddam, and served as a senior government official in a variety of top jobs.

After witnessing the postwar era, he now writes: “Bush may well go down in history as presiding over one of America’s great strategic blunders. Thousands of servicemen have been the casualties of a failed policy…But it is Iraq and the Iraqis who have paid most for the failed policies of their erstwhile liberators.”

Did he say “erstwhile” liberators? General Petraeus would beg to differ; he just put Dick Cheney’s favorite word back in circulation. During an interview Wednesday with The Times of London, he said: “The interesting dynamic here is that we have been here long enough to become liberators again for certain sectors of the population.”

Still "waxing lyrical," after all these years.

How Rudy went AWOL on Iraq

It’s odd that GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani is constantly described, in mainstream media shorthand, as a tough-on-terrorists/national security candidate – given the fact that he has zero experience in national security policy; that his credentials, such as they are, derive largely from the experience of being the mayor of New York City on 9/11; and that he has never once set foot in Iraq, the place now known as “the central front in the war on terror,” thanks to President Bush’s invasion.

Indeed, for many months, Giuliani has been trying to run for president without even mentioning the I-word. That’s a fairly audacious strategy, considering the fact that most Americans are hungry to know whether he and his ’08 rivals have any bright ideas about how to mop up the Bush administration’s mess. Nevertheless, it has been Rudy’s policy to treat Iraq as if it was the crazy aunt in the closet, as an insoluble embarrassment best kept from public view.

I recall, for instance, his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, back in March 1, when he skated past the I-word, instead issuing a feel-good clarion call to fight the bad guys worldwide: “The reality is, it’s the general thrust of what we’re doing with terrorism that is enormously important, not the fact that every single thing hasn’t worked.” One of those “things,” of course is Iraq, and it would have been instructive if the so-called 9/11 mayor had offered some suggestions on how to better handle Iraq and thus fight the global war on terror more effectively. But he had nothing to say about that.

Then came his “12 commitments” agenda, released June 12. As I noted here last week, the I-word didn’t appear anywhere on his platform. When he was later asked to explain the glaring omission, he replied: “Iraq may get better, Iraq may get worse. We may be successful in Iraq, we may not be. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s in the hands of other people.”

And now it turns out, thanks to a Tuesday story broken by Newsday, that in 2006 Giuliani actually had a golden opportunity to work directly with some of those “other people” who were donating time and effort to chart a new American policy in Iraq. He had the chance to actually rack up some substantive credentials, and demonstrate that he had some real national security bona fides. He was, in fact, an original member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group – but, as we now learn, he never showed up for any of the ISG meetings; and after he was diplomatically urged to either show up or quit the group, he opted to quit the group.

In a May ’06 letter, he told the ISG that he was unable to give the project his “full and active participation.” But now we know why: he was focused on making money. That spring, he delivered series of speeches (on his "six principles of leadership"), for as much as $200,000 a pop, and he pocketed more than $1 million during a month when the rest of the ISG members were busy digging into the crucial details of Iraq policy.

His explanation, offered yesterday, is that he didn’t think it was a good idea for a prospective presidential candidate to be serving on an apolitical panel; in his words, it “didn’t seem that I would really be able to keep the thing focused on a bipartisan, nonpolitical resolution.”

I’ll attempt to translate: Giuliani is saying that he quit the ISG because he didn’t want to risk the temptation to skew the group’s work for his own political ends.

That all sounds very noble, but I don’t buy it.

For starters, Giuliani was merely one of 10 members, and the ISG’s strong-willed chairmen, Republican James Baker and Democrat Lee Hamilton, were hardly going to let any individual hijack the work and ride it as a political hobbyhorse. It’s presumptuous of Giuliani to now claim that he could have successfully done so. In other words, the rationale he is now offering does not ring true.

No, I suspect that he quit the ISG because – with the Republican primaries on the horizon – he didn’t want to risk being associated with any proposals that might not play well politically. He didn’t want to be in a position of having to put his signature on a document that might tick off the Bush loyalists in the GOP primary electorate, so he took the preventive step of severing his ties. And in the short term, it was probably a smart move, because the ISG has been urging a 2008 troop drawdown – a distasteful option to most GOP primary voters – and Giuliani would not have wanted to be locked into endorsing that.

But, from the perspective of a centrist independent voter – someone who wants a major change in war strategy, someone who is hungry for fresh ideas – Giuliani’s decision to quit the Iraq Study Group simply looks bad. If a Democratic candidate had ever served on the ISG and quit in the same fashion, you can bet that the GOP message mavens, with their traditional gift for the visceral, would be making hay, perhaps this way:

ANOTHER CUT AND RUN DEMOCRAT! Given the chance to serve his country, he surrendered to personal greed. Given the chance to show strength, he chose weakness. Can we trust our nation's security to a man with no credentials?

And maybe Giuliani outsmarted himself. Lately, there have been public hints that the Bush administration might wind up embracing some of the study groups’ ideas. And some Republican lawmakers, notably Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, have endorsed those ideas, including an ’08 drawdown. Giuliani might have been able to boast that he had been part of the vanguard for change. But he blew his chance.

Mike flirts, Hillary dodges

Let’s get real: What are the odds that the voters of America would choose, as their next president, a pint-sized, twice-divorced Jewish billionaire New Yorker who touts gay marriage and gun control, and who not only admits to having smoked weed, but says he liked it?

Paris Hilton would graduate from law school, magna cum laude, before that happens.

Michael Bloomberg, the newly-minted independent mayor of New York, is probably cognizant of these odds; nevertheless, right now, he loses nothing by distancing himself from both parties and leaving all options open. Today, in Manhattan, the ex-Republican and ex-Democrat played peekaboo again; referring to the White House race, he said, "The more people that run for office the better."

This is standard behavior during the season of the big tease.

The big tease is a cyclical thing. A year or two before every recent presidential election, as voters vent their requisite disgust with the partisan bickering of the two major parties, it seems like somebody is always out there flirting with an independent run. The roster of failed flirters includes such names as Bob Kerrey, Bill Bradley, Lowell Weicker, and Colin Powell (the latter said in 1995 that "the time may be at hand for a third major party to emerge from the sensible center of the American political spectrum").

What generally stops them, in the end, is the rational recognition that the financial and ballot obstacles to success are virtually insurmountable, and that Americans – cautious by nature – are ultimately most comfortable with the two established brands. Coke and Pepsi might not be very nutritious, but you know what you’re getting. Nobody really knows what they would be getting if an independent president had to do business with Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill. Hence, Ross Perot spent $65 million during the ’92 campaign (a hefty sum at the time), and finished with zero electoral votes; his image as a borderline loony certainly didn’t help, but I think the branding issue was pivotal.

Theoretically, Bloomberg at least can tout his record as a successful mayor, he can further nurture his image as a sensible centrist (see the Time magazine cover this week), and he is theoretically prepared to dip into his own pocket for loose change – translation: half a billion dollars – and thus bankroll a national campaign. In other words, he would have the money (and the lawyers) to navigate the state ballot obstacles. In fact, he just took care of one potential hurdle, simply by re-registering as an independent; some states frown on independent candidates who are still registered as party members back home.

The beauty of this moment, for Bloomberg, is that he doesn’t have to decide anything. He can simply dip his toe in the water, and ponder at length whether there is a sufficient market niche for his goods. Right now, at least rhetorically, it would appear so. The polls report that most Americans are fed up with both parties – the Democratic Congress, as well as the Bush-burdened Republicans. The stalemate in Washington has yielded no progress on the issues that people care about most, everything from Iraq and health care to energy and immigration.

Hence, Bloomberg’s key remark the other day, while on the stump in California: “We do not have to settle for the same old politics. We do not have to accept the tired debate between the left and right, between Democrats and Republicans, between Congress and the White House.” Hence, his statement yesterday, about the advantages of being an independent: “Any successful elected executive knows that real results are more important than partisan battles, and that good ideas should take precedence over rigid adherence to any particular political ideology.”

He can run those lines for the rest of this year, and it’s a win-win. Potentially, he’ll boost his prospects as a would-be independent candidate; failing that, he’ll look like a national leader – as opposed to merely a lame-duck, term-limited New York mayor. And in the meantime, he’ll get all kinds of free publicity from the punditocracy, which can fill the slow periods with speculation about “who he would hurt, and who he would help” if indeed he took the plunge and made it a three-way race in autumn ’08.

I’m not going to bother; you can find those scenarios elsewhere (here, for example). I suspect that, 15 months from today, none of them will matter.

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Did you catch Hillary Clinton’s dodge yesterday, when she refused to say whether she believed it was appropriate to pardon Scooter Libby?

During a labor forum yesterday for Democratic candidates, host Chris Matthews posed the question. She replied: “Oh, I think there would be enough to be said about that without me adding to it.”

Matthews protested (“That is such a political answer!”), but the pro-Hillary audience shouted him down, demanding that he ask “a real question,” and he let it go.

Well, excuse him for asking, but it seems to me that it would valuable to hear Hillary’s thoughts on whether a Bush lieutenant, convicted of lying under oath and obstruction of justice in a national security investigation, should be jailed or not. She’s running for president, and she was asked her thoughts about the rule of law. That sounds like a “real question” to me.

But we know, of course, why Hillary took a powder on that one. If she had declared “Free Scooter,” liberals would have screamed. If she had declared “Jail Scooter,” Hillary-haters would have demanded to know why Scooter shouldn’t get the same deal that Marc Rich received. Rich, as you may remember, is the fugitive financier (58 counts of tax fraud, illegal oil deals with Iran during the hostage crisis) who was pardoned by Bill Clinton in his final hours as president. It was widely suspected at the time (but never proven) that Rich’s socialite ex-wife had greased the pardon by donating $1 million to Democratic causes, $450,000 to the Clinton presidential library fund – and $70,000 to Hillary Clinton's first Senate campaign.

So her “non-answer” about Scooter yesterday, as Matthews correctly called it, is further evidence that the old Clinton baggage will on occasion weigh heavily – forcing her to play the inartful dodger.

The radio beast bites back

Trent Lott uttered a revealing remark the other day. The Republican senator from Mississippi was venting to reporters about the stalled immigration reform bill, which has been under relentless attack from rank-and-file conservatives. Lott and other members of the GOP establishment have been pushing hard for the bill, at President Bush’s behest, and they’re clearly unhappy about all the grief they’ve been getting from the grassroots.

On talk radio, the foot soldiers of the increasing fragile GOP coalition – egged on by the talk show hosts – have been relentlessly assailing their own leaders as border wimps who are soft on illegal aliens; as Rush Limbaugh declared earlier this month, “The White House has split the Republican party on this…If this bill is killed, they’re going to have to go back to the drawing board.”

Anyway, Lott is ticked about taking all that heat. Here's his beef: “Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.”

Oh, so now it’s a “problem?” Lott and the GOP establishment had no complaints about talk radio when Limbaugh and his minions were working to propel them into power.

As early as 1992, Limbaugh was invited to sit with Marilyn Quayle in the vice president’s box at the GOP national convention. And in 1994, at the dawn of the conservative revolution, talk radio was instrumental in stoking pro-Republican sentiment and spreading the word about Newt Gingrich’s Contract for America. The Republican National Committee lined up 300 radio talk show interviews for the politicians who signed the Contract. After the GOP captured the House, Republicans even held a ceremony in Limbaugh’s honor, naming him “an honorary member of Congress” and lauding him as “the majority maker.” Grateful GOP freshman cited polls showing that frequent talk-show listeners had voted Republican in ’94 by a margin of 3-1.

Back then, the Republicans had no problem with the notion that Limbaugh (joined later by Bill O’Reilly, Neal Boortz, Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, and many more) was “running America,” because, most of the time, they behaved like national precinct captains for the GOP, acting as liaisons between leadership and the masses.

Still, there were early signs that talk radio – what the radio consultants call “non-guested confrontation” - might be a double-edged sword for the GOP. Even as Newt was settling into his job in 1995, a Dallas host named David Gold warned publicly, “If they don’t perform, we’re likely to put the heat on them. There’ll be a lot of angry folks out there, and the talk-show hosts will be leading the charge.”

And, by 2002, it was clear that the talk radio titans were not content to simply function as Bush team cheerleaders. An instructive incident occurred in the spring of that year. The Bush administration suggested in a report to the United Nations that global warming might actually be a real man-made phenomenon – and Limbaugh jumped all over it.

Limbaugh said on his Monday show that “these predictions are basically apocalyptic doom and gloom based on raw emotion.” Then he charged that Bush had become “George W. Algore.” Sure enough, within 24 hours, Bush made it clear that his own administration had been wrong; as a news report stated, “President Bush appeared to distance himself yesterday from a report by his administration that says human activities are mostly to blame for recent trends in global warming…”

But that skirmish was tame, compared to what’s happening now. Now we have radio host Michael Savage assailing Bush as the “culprit” who is coddling illegal immigrants, which is why, in Savage’s words, it’s up to the grassroots to “derail this train of treason.”

It’s clear today, in the wake of talk radio anger about immigration reform, that the GOP leadership has failed to recognize a fundamental truth about their ostensible allies: First and foremost, the hosts and their followers are instinctively anti-establishment. Talk radio is a forum for the aggrieved; stoking emotions and firing darts at the establishment (regardless of whether it is liberal or conservative) is considered good radio.

The GOP leaders have belatedly discovered that talk radio is a beast that must be incessantly fed. And now that they’re being chewed up and spit out, now that they’re griping about how the beast is “running America” at their expense, I feel it's appropriate to paraphrase the Bible and simply observe that, in politics as in life, you reap what you sow.

Bush's messenger, then and now

Let us briefly return to Sept. 26, 2004; on that date, President Bush was trying to convince voters to give him a second term. The election was just six weeks away. His number-one priority was to persuade people that he was making measurable progress in Iraq. Accordingly, a guest column appeared that day in The Washington Post, with the upbeat author playing the role of Bush’s Pollyana. Key excerpts:

I see tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up. The institutions that oversee them are being reestablished from the top down. And Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously…There are reasons for optimism…Training is on track and increasing in capacity. Infrastructure is being repaired…Progress has also been made in police training…Considerable progress is also being made in the reconstruction and refurbishing of infrastructure for Iraq’s security forces…Iraq’s security forces are developing steadily and they are in the fight. Momentum has gathered in recent months. With strong Iraqi leaders out front and with continued coalition – and now NATO – support, this trend will continue.

Pretty encouraging, right? Any swing voter who read that piece might well have concluded that it would be nuts to dump Bush and elect John Kerry, what with the Iraqis so poised to take responsibility for their own security. And since nobody could possibly question the author’s bona fides, it had to be true: the Iraqis were getting ready to stand up, thereby allowing our troops to stand down – just like the Decider had long promised us.

Well, as we now know, those reassurances turned out to be worthless; after all, there would be no need for a U. S. troop escalation today if Iraqi’s security forces had really stepped forward to secure their own country. And one would think that anyone who played Pollyana in 2004 would be automatically dismissed in 2007 as just another credibility-challenged Bush messenger.

But apparently not. The author of that ’04 column was an Army lieutenant general named David Petraeus – the same guy (now a full general) who is leading Bush’s Surge, and who has been entrusted with giving Americans a straight-talk assessment this September.

You see where I’m going with this. Given Petraeus’ rhetorical track record – and his apparent willingness, back in 2004, to inject himself into the middle of a domestic partisan campaign – why should we have confidence that in September he’ll say anything that would deviate from the White House line?

That ’04 column came to mind last week, while I was reading new remarks by Petraeus about some of the swell things that have been happening in the wake of the Surge. As proof of “normalcy,” he told USA Today about all the “professional soccer leagues with real grass field stadiums, several amusement parks – big ones, (and) markets that are very vibrant.” That’s nice about the soccer leagues. Maybe ESPN would be interested; on the other hand, ESPN might be more interested in the latest Pentagon report, which says that the endemic sectarian violence has not decreased since the Surge began in February; and that the last six months have been the deadliest for U.S. troops since the war began. Not to mention the fact that, despite the Surge and despite the supposed "tangible progress" among Iraq security forces, only 40 percent of Baghdad is currently considered secure - according to the U.S. military.

But the upbeat talking points are tough to give up. Yesterday, Petraeus made his first Sunday talk show appearance (on Fox News, naturally), and reaffirmed his praise for the Iraqi soccer leagues on real grass fields. Clearly, his September message will be: we’re making some tangible progress (soccer), but there are still tough challenges ahead, so therefore we need more time to make the Surge work, Americans should be patient, let’s look ahead to 2008 and beyond.

The key phase of the Fox interview began with this question by Chris Wallace: “There are reports that you…would like the Surge to continue until at least early 2008, that if it’s going to work, it needs to continue into early next year, is that true?”

Petraeus (bobbing and weaving like a seasoned pol): “We’ve got a number of different options that we have looked at, Chris, and it really is premature at this point in time to try to prejudge that. Again, I would suspect that late in the summer, early September, that we will provide some recommendations on the way ahead up our chain of command as well.”

Translation: “Yes.”

Wallace, to his credit, followed up: “But you surely don’t think the job would be done by the Surge by September, do you, sir?”

Petraeus (finally): “I do not, no. I think that we have a lot of heavy lifting to do.”

There it is: The troop hike continues, with Surge proponents in perpetual pursuit of “progress.” In Petraeus’ words, “counterinsurgency operations have gone at least nine or 10 years,” and perhaps this one should go longer, with “a long-term security arrangement over time,” like we have in South Korea (another idea being floated by Bush).

What’s noteworthy, however, is that Republicans on Capitol Hill aren’t buying any of this. While Petraeus was delivering the Bush line on Fox, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell was dissenting on CBS. McConnell, referring to his Republican colleagues, said: “I think everybody anticipates that there’s going to be a new strategy in the fall. I don’t think we’ll have the same level of troops, in all likelihood, that we have now. The Iraqis will have to step up, not only on the political side, but on the military side, to a greater extent. We’re not there forever.”

So there’s the disconnect: The GOP rank and file, anxious about the ’08 elections, wants a decisive September Surge report, and a drawdown of U.S. troops – while Bush and Petraeus want a Surge extension, with no drawdown. The key issue is whether McConnell and his colleagues, having already decided that Bush has no credibility on Iraq, are therefore prepared to question Petraeus’ credibility as well.

If they’re looking for ammo, they might want to start with his ’04 Pollyana pronouncements. Nothing that Petraeus said back then is as credible as what Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is saying now, in his attempt to explain why his Surge-supported government has failed to meet political benchmarks: “There are two mentalities in this region, conspiracy and mistrust.”